Big Ag Watch (https://big-agwatch.org/author/jhettinger/)
According to new documentation, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency consulted Monsanto in their preparation to make label changes for the herbicide dicamba, after it caused widespread crop damage.
On Monday, the Wall Street Journal reported that the U.S. Department of Justice has reached an agreement to approve the $62.5 billion merger, which was originally announced in May 2016.
After drift from the herbicide dicamba harmed millions of acres of soybeans in 2017, environmental groups are worried that it could damage sensitive ecological areas, particularly habitats for monarch butterflies. “There’s too much that no one is watching,” said Kim Erndt-Pitcher, a habitat and agriculture programs specialist at Prairie Rivers Network, a nonprofit advocacy group for clean water in Illinois. Erndt-Pitcher said that as dicamba drifted and harmed an estimated 600,000 acres of soybeans in Illinois in 2017, it’s likely that much of the habitat for endangered species and monarch butterflies was also damaged. “With soybeans, people are out looking for it because it can affect their bottom line,” said Nathan Donley, a senior scientist at the Center for Biological Diversity. “With milkweed, the lack of complaints doesn’t mean it’s not there.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency lessened protections for crops and wildlife habitats after Monsanto supplied research that presented lower estimates of how far the weed killer dicamba can drift, according to a review of federal documents. In its final report approving the usage of dicamba on soybeans, the agency expressed confidence that dicamba, new versions of which are made by Monsanto and German chemical company BASF, would not leave the field. The registration covered both herbicides, an EPA spokesperson said. “The EPA expects that exposure will remain confined to the dicamba (DGA) treated field,” the agency wrote in the final registration approving the use of dicamba in November 2016. However, drift from dicamba damaged more than 3.6 million acres of soybeans in 2017, according to data from Kevin Bradley, a professor at the University of Missouri.
By the time Illinois farmers started filing formal complaints of herbicide damage to their soybeans this year with the Illinois Department of Agriculture, state officials were already receiving advice from the makers of the herbicides, according to a review of department emails. Darrell Hoemann/Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting
Dicamba resistant soybeans in rural McLean County on August 7. The emails – contained in more than 60 pages of documents obtained via the Freedom of Information Act – show the companies often suggested how to deal with the complaints, sometimes without any solicitation from department officials. The emails covered the time period from January through September 2017. Monsanto, a St.
The Illinois Department of Agriculture was warned a year ago about the potential crop damage that could be caused by the herbicide dicamba if the department didn’t tighten regulations on the herbicide’s use, according to department documents. Read department documents here The warning came from an industry group of pesticide applicators during a December 2016 meeting held to discuss whether the pesticide should be designated as “restricted use,” which means only certified applicators can apply the pesticide. A non-restricted use pesticide can be purchased and applied by anyone and records of application are not required. The usage of dicamba increased significantly in 2017, after a November 2016 decision by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency to approve new formulations of the herbicide for use on a new genetically modified soybean seed made by Monsanto. Since then, after damage from dicamba spread across the Midwest and South, the U.S. EPA took steps to restrict the herbicide’s use.
Over the past three years, these companies have on average paid their executives and directors more than $100 million, according to a Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting review of financial filings. The median was $94.5 million.
Early, very early in the Trump Administration, I postulated that perhaps the POTUS wasn’t all that passionate about all things agricultural to the determinant of Big Ag in general and the individual farmer in particular.